Written in late May or early June 1921
First published in 1945
in Lenin Miscellany XXXV

Printed from the manuscript

350

SPEECH AT THE THIRD ALL-RUSSIAN FOOD CONFERENCE, JUNE 16, 1921

Comrades, first of all permit me to greet your conference on behalf of the Council of People's Commissars and on behalf of the Central Committee of the RCP.

Comrades, it is of course clear to all of us why such special attention must be paid to your conference not only by food workers, but by all soviets and party members, and by the entire party, and by all those in general who are at all consciously concerned with the fate of the Soviet Republic and the tasks before it. Your conference is convening at a moment of absolutely exceptional importance, and in this respect it cannot in any way be equated with the usual current food conferences which you have held more than once and will hold more than once again.

The absolutely exceptional importance of your present conference is explained by two circumstances. First of all, it is that unforeseen circumstance which we feared and which for the second year now again subjects the country to extraordinarily dangerous calamities: whether we have entered into an entire period of drought years, as they have been predicting to us for the second year, this we do not yet know, but that for the second year we are again in considerable regions experiencing the most severe crop failure in both grain and grass, this has already become clear and presents us with a picture of enormous danger. I will not dwell for now on how extensive the region is which, according to my in-

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